"Don't tell me you didn't know, Scott! Don't you fucking dare!"
"Ok why don't you just calm down Rose? How do you feel right now? Confused? Do you feel nauseous?"

She can hear his ballpoint scraping on paper two hundred miles away. "Excuse me, is this a fucking survey? Did I call my lover or fucking quality control? The plant, Scott, he came back, you don't understand!"
"She doesn't sound nauseous," someone murmurs.
"That's a positive response."
"Yes, yes."

Hot silence.

"Am I on a speakerphone?" she says quietly.
"No of course you're not, honey," he says. Scritch scritch scritch. "Are you sure your stomach's fine? How about your color? Are you flushed? Is your skin irritated?"

The back of her nightgown is ripped wide, and livid welts cover her back, scribbled all the way down to the fragile skin behind her knees. She doesn't know if it was the plant or the pain that made her black out. Some removed part of her mind diagnoses Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and has already written herself a prescription for Zoloft. Another part, equally removed, has already stabbed Scott and his co-workers, and set his lab on fire.